PK.

Software · Desktop app

BioCanvas

A scientific-figure studio on your Mac: journal-size artboards, 5,000+ free science icons with their licences tracked, science drawing tools, ready-made templates, and export to vector PDF and SVG.

Example figure ↗Download for Mac ↓
BioCanvas editor with a graphical abstract on the artboard and the science icon library
A graphical abstract of my 2025 Cell Death & Disease paper, built in BioCanvas.

What it does

Where it runs

A desktop app. After the free icon libraries download once, it works offline, and your figures stay on your computer.

Download and install

Download for Mac (0.7 MB). macOS 12 or newer and Python 3.10–3.13 from python.org (the app tells you if it is missing; Anaconda's Python is not used). Free; version 1.2.1.

  1. Unzip the download and drag BioCanvas.app into your Applications folder.
  2. Double-click it. The app is free and not registered with Apple, so the first time macOS may say it cannot be opened: click Done, open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down and click Open Anyway (on macOS 14 or older, Control-click the app and choose Open).
  3. The first start installs the Python packages it needs (internet needed once, a minute or two).
  4. It then downloads the free science-icon library once (about 230 MB, a few minutes). The optional AI drafts use Claude Code with your own Claude account.
  5. The app opens in your web browser. Closing that tab quits the app.

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